Energy & Emissions

Energy & Emissions Latest Updates - Justmeans

2010-10-08T03:33:00.000-07:00

Getting Real About Depleted Uranium & Sustainable Business - Jim Hickey

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For most people, the word 'accessory' brings to mind nice hand bags or belts. However, the word also has legal significance, as in 'accessories' to criminal activity. Many of my posts here have contained, at least as background material, the likely criminal nature of the imperial actions of the United States Government. Other essays have engaged such topicality directly or manifested it as part of the primary story.

Today, folks will need to think about what the meaning is of being accessories to murder. Of course, the nostrum, "all's fair in love and war" provides some comfort for those who don't like to think about such things, but the Geneva Convention and several hangings in the aftermath of WWII would suggest that such protestation only works so long as the demurral follows on the heels of victory.

Thus, if the U.S. government is participating in criminal activity, then citizens could be accessories before the fact or accessories after the fact. The former is a more serious charge, but in the case of murder, any involvement is, by definition, deadly serious.

An accessory before the fact helps to plan and facilitate a murder. Very few of us would be guilty of this charge. Only those who actually developed the homicidal plan and helped to put it into action would be suspects in this regard.

An accessory after the fact is one who helps to hide or otherwise harbor the killer. Or it may be one who has a duty to reveal or apprehend the murderer but who instead merely continues to proceed with business as usual. One might make a very potent indictmentt that, morally if not legally--the technicalities of international law almost never apply to citizens in such cases--most or even all Americans who do not actively resist murderous policies are accessories after the fact.

Post continues: http://www.justmeans.com/Getting-Real-About-Depleted-Uranium-Sustainable-Business/33857.html

The Village of Tocco Makes Big Bucks with Wind Energy - Richard Cooke

With nations like Denmark and Germany declaring that they are aiming for 100% renewable energy, it is easy to think that the renewable energy bug is spreading through Europe like wildfire. Unfortunately, that is hardly the case as some countries take steps forward but still deal primarily in fossil fuels. Italy, despite some advancement on some renewable energy fronts, has been a bit behind compared to some of their European comrades. However, with each small step made could be the next big spark for green energy.

The small Italian village of Tocco da Casauria has been in the news recently as the shining example of how renewable energy has been taking hold in the Italian countryside. Located in the mountains on the eastern side of the Italian boot and situated about in the middle, Tocco is fairly small with a population barely peaking above 2,800 people and a history that stretches all the way back to the Roman Empire. However, where aqueducts may have been the latest technological marvel then, the four windmills powering the entire village are the talk of the town today.

The decision to convert to renewable energy was made by Tocco as a way of adapting to the growing prices of electricity throughout the nation.

Post continues: http://www.justmeans.com/-Village-of-Tocco-Makes-Big-Bucks-with-Wind-Energy/33809.html

A Renewable Energy Walk in the Woods - Jim Hickey

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Narratives rule the work that I do about renewable energy, for obvious reasons. When I find myself in the position of beginning an article, therefore, I can only think in terms of finding the underlying elements of a story thread so as to orient readers to the particulars of a sequence of events. In relation to today's posting, I would encourage readers to reflect on several points that I have developed before:

The importance of the South in comprehending key social aspects of many issues;
The avoidance of the primary function of class relations in explaining social and technical matters, whether as policy or as phenomena;
The unavoidable shadow of color prejudice in events touching on the intersection of Southern, national, and technical situations;
The central role of capacity in activating community-led policy;
The important but necessarily limited part that media and culture can play in progressive transformation;
And other references as they appear below.

Whatever storytelling devices seem apropos in a given context, at times, my own movement through the 'territories' of the text is so odd, or contains so many apparently disparate elements, that I can only rely on serendipity to achieve a sense of coherence. While at times my own skills, or lack thereof, make the difference between a successful effort and one that crashes in flames, at other times the pathway among the events that transpire is as easy and clear as a bright ribbon of river viewed through the crystal firmament of Fall.

Post continues: http://www.justmeans.com/A-Renewable-Energy-Walk-in-Woods/33748.html

Geothermal Power Could Change Energy and Emissions Landscape in West Virginia - Nick Engelfried

If there's one US state that has come to symbolize dependence on dirty energy, and the emissions and other side effects of fossil fuels, that state would probably be West Virginia. Located in the heart of Appalachia, West Virginia is ground zero in the debate over mountaintop removal coal mining—a practice that involves literally blasting away mountaintops to get at buried coal seams. Almost all West Virginia's electricity comes from coal-fired power plants, of which there are more than forty in the state. Few other regions can claim such a close and destructive relationship to the coal industry as this.

It's therefore both ironic and encouraging that a report funded by Google has revealed West Virginia to be surprisingly rich in an untapped renewable resource: geothermal power. According to the report, West Virginia may have more geothermal potential than any other state in the eastern US. If utilized to their full extent, the state's geothermal energy resources could supply more electricity than West Virginia's current yearly energy demand, completely displacing coal energy and emissions.

Post continues: http://www.justmeans.com/Geothermal-Power-Could-Change-Energy-Emissions-Landscape-in-West-Virginia/33737.html

India's Ambitious Solar Energy Projects Are Set to Make Them Renewable Energy Leaders

2010-08-10T04:32:00.000-07:00

For the last several years India has been slowly working towards developing a renewable energy infrastructure to efficiently power the second most populous country in the world. So, it is no surprise that despite continuing efforts to integrate solar power into the nation that it all seems to be a mere drop in the bucket compared to the vast nuclear and fossil fuel energy resources already available. However, India presses on with several plans to complete even greater solar projects in hopes of achieving their 20 gigawatts goal for the next four years.

So far, India's many solar renewable energy projects are diverse in size and the impact that they will have on the country's overall energy output. One of the smaller projects is the current proposal to install a photovoltaic solar power generator in the Indian Parliament building in New Delhi. The project is currently accepting bids from five companies for the government proposal and is aiming to construct an 80 kilowatt generator on the site for use as a backup power source. Once completed, the generator would also divert about 50 kilowatts of renewable energy into the nearby power grid for regular use. While this is a far cry from fully converting India's government buildings towards being powered entirely by renewable energy, the Indian government believes that it is a step in the right direction. T.P.S. Sidhu, Chief Executive of the Punjab Energy Development Agency, believes that by installing this generator at the Parliament building it will demonstrate how effective they can be and perhaps gain more support for solar power.

Post continues: http://www.justmeans.com/India-s-Ambitious-Solar-Energy-Projects-Are-Set-Make-Them-Renewable-Energy-Leaders/26044.html

It's Oil the Same to Me

2010-04-30T12:52:00.000-07:00

Well, it's hard to know how to start on this in a way that isn't obvious or smarmy. Or both.

A couple of weeks ago, the President opened up 167 million acres of ocean off our Atlantic and Gulf Coasts to oil exploration and eventual drilling. This week it looks like the oil industry isn't really ready to keep its promise of doing it cleanly after all. Not that they aren't trying. Having failed to activate the "blowout preventer" 5,000 feet down at the wellhead of the Deepwater Horizon gusher in the Gulf of Mexico, they have now decided to just burn the oil slick. I only hope that this isn't the new technology that the industry said would make deepwater drilling clean and safe when the President made his announcement.

We are learning some things here, however. The New York Times quoted Amy Myers Jaffe, an energy expert at Rice University. In a fit of perhaps unintended honesty, Jaffe said that deepwater oil drilling was," as technically challenging as space travel." And then hastily added, "but safer." She went on to say that in the last 15 years there was not a single spill of over 1,000 barrels among the 4,000 active platforms off our coasts.

Let's set a few things straight. First of all, it's not terribly difficult to be safer than space travel. And when Jaffe said that deepwater drilling "is assisted by thousands of supercomputers," that didn't make me feel any better. In fact, use of the phrase "thousands of supercomputers" is so egregious that it made me doubt that she has any serious technical judgment. Secondly, space travel is as safe as it is (which isn't great) because of meticulously controlled and choreographed operations by engineers. Engineers are crawling all over any launch operation in numbers that it's hard to imagine the oil companies funding.

But let's talk about those spills.

Space travel is daring because, not only is it risky, but the consequences of failure are so grave. It is this combination of risk and the gravity of the consequences that we assess when we decide if a given activity is worthwhile. I mean, light bulbs fail every day, but no one cares because the consequences are so trivial. Conversely, bridges seldom fail (Although they sometimes do!), but the consequences are so horrendous that we mandate periodic inspections.

So it is not the frequency of large oil spills that matters, but the potential they have for causing significant damage. (See Valdez, Exxon) And when that damage is not only to water, air, land, and wildlife, but to people's health and livelihoods in fishing, tourism, and other activities, we ought to really get it all in the balance before deciding that, yes, we are going to drill oil in deep water. Or anywhere for that matter.

So whether they are drilling with new or old technology, in deep or shallow water, it comes down to those, perhaps rare, but definitely horrendous, failures that forever change a place and people's lives. When you look at those, it's oil the same to me.

Image courtesy of NASA's Earth Observatory.

Paul Birkeland lives in Seattle, WA, US, and develops Strategic Energy Management Systems for government, commercial, and industrial organizations through Integrated Renewable Energy.

Owning ALL the Emissions

2010-04-06T06:54:00.000-07:00

The US Department of Transportation and the US Environmental Protection Agency jointly issued new rules for automobile mileage standards. It’s a rule nearly 30 years in the making. (Such is the power of the auto industry even after taking Federal funds to prevent bankruptcies.) The new rules set required mileage rate at 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016, saving the drivers about $3000 in fuel expenses over the car’s life, and reducing emissions by about a billion tons over the lives of all vehicles. They estimate it will cost an extra $1000 per vehicle to do this, but past estimates have generally been pessimistic, and the actual added cost is likely to be lower over time.

But there was an interesting aspect of the rules that didn’t get much coverage in the media. Instead of counting electric cars as zero-emission vehicles, they are going to be counted as lesser-emission vehicles. I’m not certain how the new thresholds were determined, but car manufacturers will be able to count the first 200,000 electric cars they sell as having no emissions, But for anything above that, they need to count the emissions from the utility that made the power to charge the car.

This makes a lot of sense. I mean, there ARE emissions created by charging a car, just as there are when you heat your electric oven or turn on a light. In the carbon footprint world, these are known as “Scope II” emissions, and are almost universally counted when an organization determines its footprint. And the Government is not being stingy. They will allow manufacturers to count each electric vehicle sold as two vehicles so that they get the benefit of the low emissions on their fleet average mileage (which is technically what the standard actually applies to).

The ostensible purpose of this rule was to ensure that car makers wouldn’t use the sales of ‘zero emission electric cars’ to offset sales of the high end, but fuel hungry, behemoths that are more profitable, but would negatively impact the fleet average. This is a worthy goal. But automakers respond – justly I think – that we should in fact encourage sales of electric cars this way.

So this is a complexifying regulation that brings up all sorts of questions. For example, what utility’s emissions values should they use? A national average? Or should auto builders get credit for the geographic distribution of their sales and use local or regional utility emissions values? What about time of day charging? Emissions per KWH at any utility vary by time of day.

In short, this is a really questionable means of accounting for (if not controlling) carbon emissions. But at the same time, I applaud the regulators’ attempts to bring this problem to the fore. Given the absence of serious, nationwide emissions caps, there are few really elegant mechanisms to do so. It’s easy to come up with better approaches to this problem, but not under the existing Clean Air Act. If industry wants a more fair and coherent emissions control regime, then they should stop standing in the way of a national program, and start holding serious conversations with those trying to build one.

Paul Birkeland lives in Seattle, WA, US, and develops Strategic Energy Management Systems for government, commercial, and industrial organizations through Integrated Renewable Energy.

Low Tech Clean Tech

2010-03-31T08:12:00.000-07:00

Not all the excitement concerning clean energy systems has to do with pushing the efficiency of solar panels, or finding the best way to produce biofuels. Some are actually pretty low tech.

Here in the Pacific Northwest of the US, we are blessed with an abundance of hydropower. The Columbia River in fact is no longer a "river" in the traditional sense of the word, but rather a series of lakes backed up behind dams.

Hydro dams cause big problems for migrating salmon. They block the fish from getting upstream to spawn, and the slack water behind the dams means that the fingerlings spend an inordinate amount of time and energy getting out to the sea. But there is at least one aspect of these operations that is being addressed.

Going through the huge turbines on the way downstream is often deadly for salmon. Well, they don't actually get chopped up the way you might think. The blades actually turn more slowly than that. But they do experience disorienting turbulence and horrifyingly steep pressure gradients. And they do get killed.

Turbulence and pressure gradients cause those smolts that survive the passage to spin out the dam in a very vulnerable state, a situation that a growing menagerie of animals - sea lions, arctic terns, etc. - have become aware of. But the salmon may be getting some help, and the dams can be made less harmful than they are.

The US Army Corps of Engineers, who own and manage the dams on the Columbia River, and the Bonneville Power Administration, which sells the power from the dams, are paying a Pennsylvania firm to design and build a turbine with smoother interior passageways to cut down on salmon fatalities. An aging turbine at the Ice Harbor Dam on the Snake River would be the first to be replaced.

This isn't exactly rocket science, but it's close. High performance aircraft have the same problem with turbulence around their blades as the turbines in the dams do. In the case of the aircraft, the turbulence leads to inefficiency and higher operating costs. But the tools that are being used to re-vision the powerhouse blades for the salmon are the same tools used to model high performance aircraft propeller and turbine fan blades.

The larger problem has been that the turbines are so expensive to replace, that the Corps generally waits until a turbine is "on its last legs" before buying a new one. So perhaps, with the turbines in the dams on Northwest rivers reaching the end of their service lives, we'll finally see an opportunity to do the right thing along with the necessary thing.

Energy Efficiency and Human Behavior

2010-03-26T01:48:00.000-07:00

I wrote in a previous post Climate Denial and Extreme CSR about the human behavior issues surrounding the psychological acceptance of climate change. Engineers involved ni energy efficiency don't like to admit it, but there's a human behavior element to energy efficiency as well. In fact, there was just a hole conference on the subject organized by the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, not exactly a flaky bastion of mushy thought.

The Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance sent Karen Horkitz, director of NEEA's evaluation and partner services, and recently published an interview with her. I'll excerpt some of it here.

" ... The first important take-away for the energy efficiency community is that behavior change is a key component in the majority of, if not all, energy efficiency initiatives. The industry is counting on behavior change to capture as much as half of the target future energy efficiency gain. We can ignore it, but if we do we are limiting how much potential savings we can realize."

"Another take-away is that there are strong behavioral barriers that discourage people from taking action related to energy consumption and climate change. One speaker described climate change as a "perfect storm for doing nothing". That's because, from a decision-making perspective, climate change has many characteristics that typically lead human beings to make poor decisions-the potential negative impacts seem far in the future, we don't have any concrete examples of consequences, and taking action requires changes that are inconvenient for us. Behavioral economics research, however, offers techniques to influence behavior in predictable and quantifiable ways."

"That leads into the third thing I'd like to mention: that behavior change is a social science with a fairly robust body of research behind it. I think a lot of people in the energy efficiency field have this idea that behavior change is just a squishy concept-where the actions taken to change behavior are vague and the impacts unmeasurable. But we actually do know quite a bit about how to affect predictable and quantifiable behavior change. Mass marketers have known about and applied effective behavioral science techniques for decades, and we also know quite a bit about how to effect behavior change in commercial and industrial settings."

"It's not just a question of the environmental impacts of climate change. Businesses, industry and government all face tremendous financial and security risks associated with climate change. In addition, energy efficiency offers industry a way to improve production efficiency, and offers the commercial and industrial sectors a source of competitive advantage. The financial community has even begun to recognize that companies who are effectively addressing sustainability issues also tend to have more effective overall business management and results.

The conference featured numerous presentations that illustrated various approaches to behavior change. Some trends include:

Programs that focus on energy consumption feedback to the end user.

Competition-based programs.

Community-based programs.

Strategic energy management.

Media campaigns and social media.

Research techniques.

ACEEE has made a complete library of presentations from the conference available.

New legislation to Amend Recovery Act & Restrict Overseas Products

2010-03-26T00:55:00.000-07:00

Senators Charles E. Schumer (D-NY), Bob Casey (D-PA), Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Jon Tester (D-MT) requested that stimulus spending on a renewable energy program is discontinued until restrictions are implemented ensuring that the grantees of federal funding for these projects utilize domestic construction materials and products. The senators have cited the fact that nearly 80 percent of $2.1 billion in wind energy U.S. Recovery Act grants were approved for foreign-owned companies. Much of the recent consternation is over a $1.5 billion Texas wind power project that according to Sen. Schumer would create 3,000 green jobs in China but only 300 in the U.S.

This group of senators requested a moratorium on the distribution of section 1603 grant funding and awarding of any further grants until an amendment to the stimulus package is approved by the legislative process. Section 1603 of the Recovery Act allocates 30 percent cash grants for energy property in lieu of federal tax credits. Furthermore, they have authored new legislation entitled the American Renewable Energy Jobs Act, which would amend the Recovery Act and require that stimulus funds be only authorized for clean energy projects that incorporate materials manufactured in the U.S. and/or create a majority of jobs in the country. This is nothing new as “Buy American” legislation intended to benefit the U.S. economy and employment through the use of U.S. government funds has been part of many policies for decades including many infrastructure elements of the stimulus bill but has been impinged upon as the country outsources more of its manufacturing.

The American Renewable Energy Jobs Act proposes to expand the “Buy American” provision to include restrictions on all U.S. trading partners, and to extend the provision to private enterprises. The Department of Energy, which oversees the clean energy stimulus program, stated that suspending the clean energy grants program would require immediate layoffs at U.S. manufacturing plants due to the stoppage of work on major contracts.

What’s more, China is one of the leading global producers of solar panels; many of the power generation projects funded by the stimulus have subsidized the installation of overseas solar products. This is the trade-off for the carbon emissions reductions benefit until the U.S. bolsters its clean energy manufacturing market share, as it is attempting to do by offering more tax credits to companies. Thus, now that health care reform is essentially complete from a legislative perspective, the U.S. has the opportunity to enact comprehensive energy reform to lessen the likelihood of these conflicts from happening in the future.

The development of a clean energy economy is a vague term since it has not been clearly defined whether it means simply the generation and consumption of clean energy power, clean energy manufacturing or both. The Recovery Act was quite good-natured in its intention of funding a fledging alternative energy industry, where many companies struggled to obtain R&D support and competed on an unlevel playing field on the demand side, based on minimal government support from past administrations. However, due to the lack of a sufficient clean technology corporate infrastructure, it was inevitable that much of the funding would aid overseas companies, some of which whom do not even have facilities in the U.S.

A Nominal Egg

2010-03-18T00:40:00.000-07:00

The story goes that a recent arrival in New England (in the Northeast United States) met a neighbor who warned her that heating her home that winter was going to cost "a nominal egg." Tickled that she had learned a local expression, she told her Boston-born husband at dinner that evening. He told her that it was not a local expression, that people everywhere used it. She said that she had never herself heard it before. He replied that surely someone somewhere had told her that something had cost "an arm and a leg!"

Meanwhile over on Sightline.org's Daily Score, Eric de Place posted an interesting piece on electricity prices. He plotted electricity consumption vs. electricity price for the 50 states (less Hawaii, but plus Washington, D.C.). Lo and behold, even given all the generalizations inherent in such a plot, the higher cost correlated with lower consumption. De Place's conclusion was that to encourage energy conservation, we should raise electricity prices. This sparked a lot of discussion ranging from the efficacy of tiered rates to the need to avoid a regressive rate structure that weighs more heavily on lower income citizens than higher income ones.

The upshot for me was a little different.

Here's the conundrum I see: Higher energy prices encourage conservation. But energy conservation serves only to keep electricity prices where they are. For example, here in the US Pacific Northwest, excess power generated by our dams is sold to California consumers. Basically, the energy we save is just placed on the open market. Those not doing the conserving get cheaper energy (because there is more supply), and to the extent we can get California consumers to purchase our excess electricity, our electric rates get subsidized and are arguably unjustifiably low.

My thinking is that we need to take the electricity conserved and translate that into other resources. For example, we save XXX mwh region wide over a month. We convert that to how much "water-through-the-dams" was saved, and spill that water in a way that benefits salmon instead. That way it's a sort of cap-and-trade for electricity. We are actually generating less electricity and investing more in our other resources over time. The cost of electricity rises, especially outside the region, because the excess created by conservation is actually removed from the market. The 'savings' get invested in others of our resources in our region.

I know there are probably a thousand things to work through to put such a system in place. But it is this fundamental dynamic that will start the positive feedback cycle on energy conservation. So long as our 'conserved' electricity is simply made available for others to use, the price will not go up, and serious energy efficiency, not the energy itself, will appear to cost the 'nominal egg.'

What Solar Oversuppliers Could Learn from LED Market

2010-03-15T04:04:00.000-07:00

Global supply of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) is facing a shortage in 2010, according to several leading market analyst firms. As more and more companies support the solar supply chain, which has an overabundance of panel inventory currently, it is surprising that more companies have not turned their attention to overlapping synergistic products and services that support the LED supply chain. What’s more, high-brightness LEDs (HB-LEDs) feed into energy-efficient solid state lighting, which has an analogous carbon emissions reductions benefit of solar and is eligible for green energy incentive programs. In addition, companies who receive green stimulus or other government funding for SSL are able to offset their net R&D cost, which also supports consumer electronics, where there is an emerging shortage of LED backlighting devices.

Total consumption of LEDs reached 63 billion units in 2009, up from 57 billion in 2008. According to iSuppli market analysts, overall LED consumption was just above the industry’s total capacity of 75 billion units, indicating that many LED manufacturers were operating at nearly 100 percent capacity levels. The shortage predicted in 2010 applies to LEDs used for the backlighting of large-screen LCD-TVs due to their appealing thin design attributes and stellar picture quality. In comparison to notebook computers, which typically use 50 LEDs, or monitors, which require approximately 100 LEDs, LCD-TVs consume 300 to 500 LEDs per panel; thus a shortage would impact these products the most, especially in terms of cost. Furthermore, LEDs have deeply penetrated markets including: cell phones, portable navigation devices, digital photo frames, digital cameras and keypads.

On the green energy front, LED solutions are being increasingly adopted in the general illumination market but primarily for commercial and industrial lighting applications, which ultimately lower a building’s energy cost and carbon footprint. However, there are only two primary equipment-makers that support this overall supply chain, Aixtron of Germany and Veeco Instruments of the U.S., which are planning to double their production capacity by the fourth quarter of 2010 compared to the end of 2009. Interestingly enough, their tools are capable of supporting the growth of thin-films used both in the solar and LED industries allowing them to shift emphasis, depending on demand. In addition, there are significantly less HB-LED producers globally compared to solar panel manufacturers, whom have been dealing with a glut of oversupply and declining module prices. However, a domestic LED chip producer, Cree, based in Durham, NC, has been enjoying record profits and stock price valuations in recent months.

According to Navigant Consulting, 2009 started with approximately 1.6-gigawatts (GW) of solar inventory and 7.2GW of technology was shipped to the first point of sale. Approximately 6.6GW were installed globally in 2009, which leaves 2.2GW of photovoltaic cells and modules likely sitting in inventory in 2010. This inventory will likely continue to grow based on the fact there are about 400 solar panel manufacturers across the world. Even though the solar industry benefited from record low module prices in recent years, leading to increasing installation figures globally, an increasing oversupply would be alarming, especially once prices stabilize, which may lessen demand.

As the LED industry seeks to meet a possible shortage, the solar industry has been facing sliming profits and the stalling of clean energy legislation globally, as selling prices shift closer to operating costs. It is surprising that more corporations have not diversified their product portfolio by shifting into the LED market.

Photo credit: Symbolism of Solar Oversupply

Clams and Red Herrings

2010-03-09T04:21:00.000-08:00

I wrote earlier about why we find it so easy to deny what our emissions are doing to the planet. Climate Denial and Extreme CSR. But I just found another reason - red herrings. Read this brief report from Liz Gross of Living On Earth (a site that I otherwise much respect).

"Laughing gas can make a dental patient happy as a clam. But scientists were not so happy to find clams belching out this powerful greenhouse gas. A recent study by Danish and German biologists analyzed digestion in a number of aquatic bottom feeders, including mollusks and insect larvae. The belly gas of these invertebrates contained levels of laughing gas - or nitrous oxide - that surprised the scientists. Nitrous oxide is the fourth largest contributor to global warming. Pound for pound, this gas traps 310 times as much heat as carbon dioxide. While burning fossil fuels is the most common source of nitrous oxide emissions, worms living in nitrogen-rich soil also release the gas. The recent study though was the first to measure the emissions from animals living in rivers, streams and oceans.

But the researchers found it's not the clams themselves that release the gas - it's their lunch. These animals feed on sediment full of nitrogen-hungry bacteria. And thanks to runoff from fields treated with chemical fertilizer, there are plenty of nitrates out there. Usually, the bacteria don't break down these nitrates. But in environments with no oxygen, like the belly of a clam or a snail, they do - releasing laughing gas in the process.

With demand for nitrogen fertilizer increasing, and global greenhouse gas emissions going up, nitrous oxide in mollusk burps is no laughing matter. That's this week's note on emerging science." So why bring this clam thing up? Why link clams to greenhouse gas production? Is this to absolve us of our own nitrous production? (See my post on the Tangled Web of Carbon Emissions for a sense of how great that problem is, and the surprising single industry that produces most of it.) Clams have been producing nitrous for eons. Should we include exterminating clams as part of our response to climate change?

Well, first of all, nitrous oxide produced by clams is part of the current cycling of materials in the ecosphere. It is not like hauling up fossil carbon from the depths and spraying it into the atmosphere. Not only can we NOT stop what clams are doing, but it would probably be destructive to do so. Also, burning fossil fuels is not the most common source.

"Well," Liz might say to me, "I never advocated the extermination of clams." That is certainly true. And yet that is the laughable, unspoken, and absurdist conclusion to a piece such as this. We all want to laugh, so we all conclude it. And in the process we trivialize emissions and climate change.

This is a small thing, but climate skeptics LOVE reading these kinds of articles, articles that point out the "natural course' that the Earth is taking, articles that let us laugh at a trivialized catastrophe. We all need a sense of humor here, but really. It's hard enough forcing change through the political system without these kinds of postings. Let's be judicious in our presentation of topics.

Solar PV Materials Growth Amidst Module Price Declines

2010-03-03T05:15:00.000-08:00

The solar photovoltaic (PV) industry will likely be affected by steep price declines again in 2010, although prices are expected to fall at a more moderate rate than in 2009, according to a leading industry analyst firm, iSuppli. This firm forecasts overall demand to increase sharply, but this depends on the German feed-in tariff subsidy that is guaranteed for only half of this year, which impacts nearly 50 percent of the current global market. Price declines for PV solar panels will likely be fueled by the emergence of more hefty competitors in the field of nearly 400 already such as: Samsung, LG Electronics, Bechtel and the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., among others, whom are developing or expanding solar operations.

Many solar companies were gearing up in early 2009 for potential global greenhouse gas emissions reductions treaties and American renewable energy mandates for utilities, which never materialized. iSuppli analysts have announced recently that global installed watts for PV systems will grow by 64 percent in 2010, reaching 8.3GW; thus matching 2008 growth levels before the recession and bank credit crisis took its toll. Nonetheless, they have made a reasonable assertion that the industry will see a continuation of the significant price declines that carried through 2009.

However, even though the market for PV chemicals and materials declined slightly to about $2.44B in 2009, it is expected to grow 27 percent to $3.1B in 2010, according to Linx Consulting. This firm has published a recent report entitled “Chemicals & Materials for Photovoltaic Cells and Modules 2010,” which forecasts this market to reach $14B by 2015, lowering their April 2009 estimate by $1B, likely due to the lack of binding national clean energy and carbon capping regulations in the U.S and abroad. Linx has based their upstream supply chain growth figures on end-user demand for solar power, which they predict will increase from 5.8GW currently to 38GW by 2015. The PV supplier branch of the supply chain is less affected by module price declines than PV manufacturers and enjoys less overall competition.

PV solar cells are comprised of several main categories including: crystalline silicon, amorphous silicon, tandem-junction, cadmium telluride, and copper indium gallium selenide cells and modules. Key technology areas for improving cell performance are centered around texturization, chemical cleaning, metallization, selective emitters, backsheets, frontsheets, and encapsulants. The Linx market research report focuses on all of the above issues, as well as perspectives on the levelized cost of energy as a function of module performance, including geographic adjustments such as local incentives and solar irradiance factors.

One particular company positioned to capitalize well on the solar PV materials boom is DuPont. This company has recently added to its investment in a $120M capacity expansion, announced in August 2009, for raw materials processing related to these cells, bringing the total commitment of these two phases to $295M. A primary driving force for this expansion is to deploy its industry-leading Tedlar films that serve as a critical component of solar PV backsheets, providing long-term durability and performance for solar PV modules in all-weather conditions. The manufacturing steps for Tedlar-oriented solar PV backsheet films include producing vinyl fluoride monomer, which is converted into polyvinyl fluoride polymer resins prior to extrusion into the Tedlar film. DuPont’s solar PV backsheet film line expansion will be located at their Circleville, Ohio, facility using existing and retrofitted assets; production is slated to begin in September 2011.

This expansion supports Tedlar-oriented film capacity for global demand of over 10GW of solar PV module production. DuPont expects that overall sales of its family of products into the solar PV industry will exceed $1B by 2012 based on their internal analysis of solar PV market growth over the next several years, which would accelerate demand, in particular, for Tedlar and other new materials that have increased the lifetime and efficiency of solar cells and modules previously.

Declining solar PV module prices over the last couple years and reports for continued behavior have not generated much consolidation in the solar module manufacturing arena; thus, PV solar materials providers have the opportunity to serve this market to meet increasing installation demands. Companies such as DuPont, as well as leading process equipment providers, with competitive advantages for certain critical products, will be in a good position to capitalize on this trend.

Opening the Bloom Box

2010-03-03T03:00:00.000-08:00

There's been a lot of news this week about Bloom Energy's just released Bloom Box. They've been working on it for 8 years, and have VC investment of $400 million. Colin Powell sits on their Board, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Governor of California, attended the introduction ceremony.

The Bloom Box has been spoken of at times as producing cheap power while having no emissions and requiring no fossil fuels. The Bloom Box is a standalone unit, although it can connect to the grid the way your PV array does, and can be built in custom sizes to power individual homes or corporate campuses.

So this week was the unveiling, and inside the box was ... (drum roll please) ... a fuel cell.

Okay, it may be a more efficient fuel cell than ever before built. It may have some proprietary catalyst painted onto its ceramic plates. And it may have more flexible tastes in fuels than other fuel cells. But the upshot is that it's a fuel cell, not a power source.

You can look at fuel cells as either batteries that consume fuel, or tremendously efficient, low emission generators that don't get very hot. Either way, you're looking at a way to release energy that was actually generated in some other manner, or transported from somewhere else. They are not like solar panels and wind turbines that actually MAKE power from the sun and the wind respectively. Fuel cells combust fuel, i.e. things that have easily liberated hydrogen atoms in them - natural gas, propane, biogas, hydrogen gas. But there has to be a predescesor process to put that hydrogen atom in that place, to make that fuel - fossil fuel formation, biodigestion, hydrolysis. So, who is accounting for that energy? Who is accounting for those emissions?

More efficient fuel cells have a role to play in the clean energy world for sure. (Less expensive fuel cells have an even greater role to play, but I'm not sure Bloom has gotten there.) But they are not a messiah technology that's somehow going to save us all. So why all the hoopla?

The word I get is that the firms that have installed Bloom Boxes - Google, Wal-Mart, Fedex - have pushed Bloom to come out with the announcement so that they themselves can polish their green credentials. The competition for customers, and even more for employees, requires that these firms green their operations up as much as possible. And unless and until Bloom itself makes an announcement, those firms could not tout their Bloom Box installations. So perhaps here is an interface with CSR.

If the need for green credentials drives firms to adopt marginally improved technologies at relatively great expense, is that really a good thing for us all?

Clean Energy Debate Hurdles facing U.S. & its States

2010-03-02T10:06:00.001-08:00

In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court of the United States recently overturned campaign finance laws. This encourages more direct spending by corporations, unions and other special interest groups. The Supreme Court ruling removes restrictions for federal campaign financing from these special interest groups and gives them the same rights to freedom of speech as citizens. According to a Needham & Co. estimate, $2.8 billion will be spent on issue-oriented influence or lobbying in the U.S. this year.

Although this may be a boom for corporations, marketers and media agencies, the decision will tilt the balance of power in formulating new legislation. The results of massive spending and its impact on the health care debate have been obvious. The Washington Post reported that corporations spent an average $1.4 million per day to stall the President's health care legislation, which is still being dragged out in Congressional events such as today’s Health Care Caucus. Constant stalemates supported by wealthy incumbent corporations in power over the status quo will lessen the possibility for change on many issues across the board including climate change and the development of a clean energy economy.

Public debates have already been confused by misinformation on health care and other major issues, and the political culture will be even more distorted by corporate spending in the future. Under the new ruling, facts will be lost to an even higher degree through a plethora of false television advertisements and lobbyist events to protect future profits and market share. Therefore, with unlimited spending on major policy issues, misinformation campaigns by Big Oil, Big Coal and other special interests will be even more aggressive, potentially brainwashing the public who may have initially favored clean energy and carbon emissions reduction policies.

In the case of renewable energy development, the Recovery Act has been an obvious boost; however, stimulus funding is essentially a temporary lift to an industry that requires substantial long-term legislative support to overcome the even more powerful entrenched fossil fuel industry. The Hill.com reports that the joint DOE/Treasury grants in lieu of tax credit program implemented last year under the Recovery Act may end too soon to benefit some planned solar plants. In many cases, construction must be started this year in order to benefit from the program, which is a stiff challenge for solar projects that have been delayed due to permitting issues for large-scale capital projects and transmission, especially for ones on federal land. The solar industry has asked Congress to extend the deadline to begin construction beyond 2010, but an extension may not be forthcoming.

Part of the current problem for renewable energy deployment in the U.S. is lack of national renewable portfolio standard (RPS), as in many other countries, requiring Congressional approval, especially one linked to a greenhouse gas emissions cap-and-trade system. Global companies and outside investors cannot be expected to keep up with emerging policies for 50 different states without any national standard, where one state has a mandate or simply a goal of 15 percent renewable energy by 2015 and its neighboring state has a higher percentage, including differing energy sources, or no requirement at all. The lack of a consistent national RPS policy complicates investment and deployment strategies and lessens the overall visibility of an eventual market opportunity.

Furthermore, without a national RPS there will be imbalanced market and overall less growth in the renewable energy sector, since many states will not have a major incentive to match surrounding states or the ability to overcome wealthy fossil fuel lobbyist organizations. However, if a national RPS or cap-and-trade system is ever enacted, the states which fell behind the curve and never progressed in building a clean energy infrastructure and accompanying power grid system or smart grid, will lack the know-how and have a mountain to climb, as their utilities may be forced to purchase specific renewable energy at a premium from out-of-state power providers, driving up the cost for all energy users. What’s more, states without state RPS mandates will lose out on the synergistic spillover effect that clean energy deployment has, which is the attraction of the supply chain (jobs) to the customer base, as in the case of solar manufacturing operations opening up in California- a state with the most aggressive state RPS in the country.

Arizona has a mandate requiring 15 percent of its energy to be generated from renewables by 2025, which is moderate compared to about 29 other states with requirements. However, its House Committee voted 5-2 to overturn the state's renewable energy mandate this week. The bill that came out of committee, House Bill 2701, will be presented to the full House and is designed to strip regulators of their authority to impose renewable energy mandates; thus, potentially letting the status quo to remain intact where nearly half of its power is derived from coal. The bill lumps nuclear power in with renewable resources and prohibits any utility from being forced to buy "alternative" energy. The National Renewable Energy Lab has conducted numerous studies showing that Arizona has the highest solar availability (potential) in the country, making the sun ones its valuable resources, including the tourism and snow bird benefit, similar to the abundance of oil in Texas.

After Arizona finally was able to attract a major solar manufacturer to the Phoenix area for the first time in its history, after passing related incentive legislation, and its governor, Jan Brewer, touted the state as the next “solar capital of the world,” solar energy giant SunTech Power Holdings, based in China, is now reconsidering its plan to build its plant in Goodyear, AZ if the bill is passed, according to the Phoenix Business Journal. And that could be how the cookie crumbles, as the state and the country as a whole, drowns in debt and economic woes without being able to see the promise of future economic growth.

EU Smart Grid Initiative for Total Renewable Energy Conversion

2010-02-11T00:14:00.000-08:00

Representative 'smart' grid infrastructure.

The European Union (EU) could meet an initiative of effectively utilizing 90 percent renewable energy, only, by 2050 via adding intelligence to its existing grids and building a cross-border infrastructure, also known as a smart grid, according to a study by Greenpeace and the European Renewable Energy Council (EREC), an industry group. The report published last week states that with the appropriate policy, Europe’s grid infrastructure could be improved to incorporate clean, renewables on a much wider scale. Previously, the EU's Renewables Directive approved a binding goal requiring 20 percent of the bloc's energy supply to be derived from renewable sources by 2020. Regardless, Europe's electricity grids, as in most other parts of the world, were originally built to handle large centralized power plants rather than large amounts of decentralized or distributed power produced by smaller-scale sources.

Digital smart grid systems that gauge and match supply and demand at the generation station and consumer end, respectively, would be required for new, advanced power transmission and distribution infrastructures that are capable of incorporating renewables in a streamlined manner. The EU's blueprint for financing its Strategic Energy Technology SET Plan estimated that €2 billion of investment in grids will be needed over the next 10 years in order to integrate renewable energy and operate half of the networks according to "smart" principles. In addition, the EREC study estimates that the cost of upgrading interconnections and building new super grid connections to supply Europe securely would cost 209 billion euros by 2050. It will be difficult to foster the public support for this amount of investment, as these countries deal with ballooning national debts, as in the United States.

The annual investment in Europe is expected to be approximately €5 billion, which equates to about five euros per household per year, according to Greenpeace International. However, besides the cost issues, there are other concerns facing smart grid initiatives. Risk-averse electric utilities are leary of adopting new technologies in the next five years while regulators have not authorized permanent incentives. Power consumers are also sensitive to the rollout of smart meters of energy usage, as they fear that their privacy might be compromised by power utilities. Stimulus funding in the U.S. has been utilized in nearly all 50 states for the distribution of millions of smart meters to consumers, as has been done in solar-oriented states such as Arizona, which will mainly lead to energy conservation, as users can monitor energy costs in real time, as opposed to waiting to view their monthly statement.

Interestingly enough, nine North Sea countries announced in December 2009 initiatives for constructing a North Sea grid. Typically, most smart grid demonstration projects globally are on a much smaller, city-scale, but ultimately, ones such as the North Sea project will be the most relevant for building continental systems capable of enabling a national renewable energy portfolio standard, as may be authorized in the U.S. According to a study by Zpryme, a Texas-based research firm, smaller nations than the U.S. such as France and Great Britain will spend less money on smart grid projects, but are nonetheless currently more advanced in smart grid infrastructure.

In comparison, the Chinese government will invest more money in smart grid technology than the U.S. in 2010. China will spend more than $7.3 billion in the form of stimulus loans, grants and tax incentives this year, compared to $7.1 million by the U.S. Information technology companies have a tremendous business opportunity at hand, since much of the network requires products and services from these types of companies. China’s emphasis on conversion to a renewable energy economy and a more efficient electricity grid has attracted the attention of major U.S. companies, including General Electric, IBM, American Superconductor and Hewlett Packard, among others, whom are gauging on how to capitalize on that investment. Last month, G.E. announced a partnership with the city of Yangzhou to develop a smart grid demonstration center to promote its technology in the Chinese market.

The global cleantech race requires a smart grid infrastructure, which is in and of itself a major market, comprised of numerous products and services that will be exported readily to less developed countries in the field. For states with world-class solar power climates like Arizona, a continental smart grid will facilitate the transfer of renewable energy from sparsely populated desert regions to dense metropolitan areas across the country.

Hydropower Rides Wave of Clean Energy Stimulus

2010-02-02T11:09:00.000-08:00

Hydropower is the long-forgotten and under-appreciated sibling of the renewable energy family. It does not garner a fraction of the media attention of solar, and many people do not even realize it is a renewable energy source. Moreover, it was a challenge to have it incorporated into clean energy stimulus programs. According to 2008 U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) statistics, renewable energy was responsible for only 7 percent of America's power supply, and 34 percent of that amount was derived from hydropower and while only 1 percent was from solar. However, as important as hydropower has been in the past, it has many more limitations in terms of land development due to environmental and sustainability issues than solar, as the country shifts towards a higher degree of clean energy.

Beyond the use of conventional hydropower technology, there is increasing government interest in developing new power generation derived from the ocean and in-stream kinetic energy potential. Since pumped-storage hydropower is the only large-scale storage option available at this time, the National Hydropower Association (NHA) argues that increasing wind and other variable renewable generation technologies requires building additional pumped storage, as a stable back-up energy source. According to the Energy Information Administration, there is 20,000 MW of operating pumped-storage capacity in the U.S.; developers have proposed constructing another 23,000 MW. Moreover, current U.S. hydropower generation avoids approximately 225 million metric tons of carbon emissions from entering the atmosphere each year.

Growing interest in non-hydro renewables such as solar, wind, biomass and geothermal is also increasing funding emphasis on the hydropower industry. DOE has stated that to integrate the wind resources needed to generate 20 percent of U.S. electricity by 2030, which is an unofficial national goal, the U.S. will need an additional 50,000 MW of peaking or storage capacity. This point enabled the NHA to successfully lobby for including additional tax incentives for hydropower in national economic stimulus programs. The Recovery Act extends the placed-in-service date through December 31, 2013, for small irrigation hydro, incremental hydropower from additions to existing hydro plants, hydropower development at existing non-powered dams, ocean energy and in-stream hydrokinetic technologies projects. This funding requires that developers of these projects complete the work in five years.

The Recovery Act clean energy stimulus also allows hydropower projects to claim a 30 percent investment tax credit (ITC) in lieu of a production tax credit (PTC), both of which have been extended through 2013. The ITC is aimed at opening up more financing for renewables projects in lieu of the tightened credit markets in the past year. Another incentive available to a hydropower facility, if the facility refuses the PTC and the ITC, is a grant issued from the Secretary of the Treasury worth 30 percent of the cost of the project.

This same legislation also authorizes $1.6 billion of new clean renewable energy bonds (CREBs), which is an option for public power providers to the PTC. It allows them to finance development of facilities that generate electricity from renewables such as hydropower. Furthermore, this stimulus program also created an advanced energy investment tax credit for companies that invest in clean energy technology manufacturing facilities. Hydropower equipment manufacturers are eligible to participate in the 30 percent credit if they upgrade, expand, or re-establish a facility to manufacture “property” for producing energy from the sun, wind, geothermal or hydro sources. The original provision provided the tax credits only for wind, solar and geothermal; however, the NHA staff successfully lobbied to ensure that the definition was expanded to include “other renewable resources;” thus, encompassing traditional hydropower and advanced hydrokinetics associated with ocean and river currents.

Even U.S. legislation has treated hydropower as an afterthought and oversight while developing policy for the clean energy stimulus, not including it in the initial mix for renewable energy funding. Part of that issue has been due to significantly less media attention and support from the top of the Obama Administration for hydropower in rebuilding the U.S. economy. Hydropower has a more limited supply chain than other renewables such as solar; therefore, it is less stimulative economically while it also has less exportation potential when compared to wind and solar components.

The DOE budget for hydropower underwent severe reductions under the Bush Administration, which was hardly supportive of any renewable sources in general. However, hydropower will ride the wave of increased support for clean energy in President Obama’s recently announced budget proposal, which includes $6 billion for related technologies, along with an increase of fees and elimination of tax breaks for oil and gas companies.